About the only baseball totem Ichiro didn't receive before Monday's season opener was a bat with the word "Wonderboy" burned into the barrel.

	The Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki doesn't need to homer to excite the crowd.

He received his silver bat for winning the American League batting title. He received his gold glove for being voted one of the best three defensive outfielders in the league. He received the Jackie Robinson rookie of the year award as last year's top rookie. He received the Kennesaw Mountain Landis award as the league's most valuable player. He received so much, in fact, that he needed help from two people just to take it all home.

"They're all for last year," Ichiro said of his hardware through a translator, "and that's in the past."

Perhaps, but this year sure looked a lot like last year when Ichiro stepped to the plate for his first at-bat of the season and dumped a pitch just beyond White Sox shortstop Royce Clayton's reach, the ball's trajectory dropping so suddenly it resembled a graph of Enron's stock prices last autumn. He raced to first as once again, opponents shook their heads and wondered, "How the hell does he do that?"

"We saw it all last year so it's beyond luck," White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko said after the White Sox beat Ichiro and the Mariners 6-5. "You would watch him get those hits and say, 'Well, that lucky streak has to end.' But it didn't. And obviously it's not luck."

Ichiro singled twice more after his first-inning bloop Monday, one a grounder into the hole between second and third, the other a scorcher up the middle. The three hits give him 245 for his career, more than Harmon Killebrew had after his first two full seasons as a fulltime player. Since his third game in the majors, his average has never been below .324.

"I know he's played a bunch of years over in Japan but you would think his first year here people would adjust to him and he would go through a bad streak. But he just shows no let up," Konerko said. "Obviously, you can get him out at times, but he's always right on the ball. He has such great hand to eye coordination that it's like he can slow the ball down. It looks like the ball is in slow motion."

Ichiro's style is a welcome break from today's usual home run derby. He brings the element of speed and Hit 'Em Where They Ain't back to the game, proving that a bloop over the shortstop's head can be just as entertaining as a home run into the upper-deck (especially when followed by a stolen base).

"I didn't imagine that someone with my style would have such an impact on the fans but it did," Ichiro said this spring. "Don't you think that kids now think they can play in the major leagues if they see someone like me do it?"

It's true, though. Even now, high schoolers are throwing their creatine in the garbage and going on riceball diets, hoping to shed 20-30 pounds.

The one negative to Ichiro's rookie season was a low walk total that kept his on-base percentage to a respectable but hardly overwhelming .387. Mariners hitting coach Gerald Perry said he would like Ichiro to be more patient at the plate and take more walks but the outfielder isn't so sure.

"To think about walking, that's not a good attitude to step into the batters box with," Ichiro said. "It's more a situation that comes up and if the count dictates it, maybe that will enter your mind. But you can't ever think of a walk as being a goal because if a pitcher throws all strikes, you would never get a walk. There is no way I can control the number of walks I get. Of course, if I would get more walks and it would help the team, it would be a good thing but that's not even in my mind yet."

With a season on his baseball card, Ichiro still is experiencing new things in the majors. In addition to the awards, he went home Monday with a losing record for the first time after the Mariners lost the opener in uncharacteristic fashion. He and Mark McLemore singled with no one out in ninth and Seattle down by a run. That's a game the Mariners always won last year, but this time Jeff Cirillo, Bret Boone, Edgar Martinez and Mike Cameron failed to get a run home.

Ichiro also badly misplayed a Frank Thomas fly ball into what was scored a double by a charitable scorekeeper (what do you have to do to get an error these days?). Asked whether the wind fooled him or he just made an error, Ichiro replied, "I'll leave that up to you."

Was the loss a bad omen for the Mariners or just one bad game? We'll see, just as we'll see what Ichiro can do for an encore. And whether he can fit any more trophies into his home.

"I would like to get better," he said, "but I don't know what I will get better at."

His opponents can only worry.

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.